One of the most over-the-top FPS games of last-gen — hell, of all time — comes to current gen thanks to the magic of remastering. Enter Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition from People Can Fly and Gearbox. The foul-mouthed, gore-filled shoot’em up puts you in the boots of Grayson Hunt, a disgraced merc on a quest for blood and redemption. If you missed out on this simultaneously unique and generic romp last-gen, you should give the re-release a closer look if you’re in the market for a fun, straight-forward shooter.
Bulletstorm is all about racking up arcade-like kills against some genetically modified enemies — the Skulls, Creeps, Burnouts, and eventually a secretive fourth group late in the game that I won’t mention for spoiler sake. You play as Gray son Hunt, the leader of a four man merc team, Dead Echo, who are commissioned by General Sarrano of the Confederacy to take out special targets. One day, having just completed a mission, Grayson comes to the realization that Sarrano has been using him and his team to kill good, innocent people and that the mission details were lies. When given a chance to strike back, Grayson puts his ship and crew at risk and causes both his ship and Sarrano’s massive warship to crash down on a very dangerous planet named Stygia.
Two of Dead Echo are killed right away, and a third barely survives thanks to cybernetic implants, but this one, Ishi, is barely in control of his mind anymore as the AI tries to take over. The two of you fight alongside one another and before long encounter another merc, Trishka, who is the leader of Final Echo. Interestingly and unique for a FPS is that you spend the entire game paired up with either Ishi or Trishka, and often both, and you’ll never fight alone. The flow of the combat fits this dynamic nicely; you don’t have to worry about escorting or saving the two friendly AI, but you also can’t count on them to do much for you, and there is no reviving either way (just a cooldown health system). Having those AI around does help flesh out what is actually a decent story with at least four somewhat interesting characters, which really, is more than you might expect for the over-the-top action game this is.
During your relentless pursuit of General Sarrano, you’ll fend off hundreds of the Skulls, Creeps, and Burnouts with a variety of weapons that you get at a regular pace. The Leash is the most unique of these — it’s a left-wrist worn device that launches out an electrical, well, leash of sorts, that can grab objects and bad guys. Many scripted parts in the game have you Leashing a part of the environment and yanking it down (simply press L1 when prompted) to create a new path for you and your party to traverse. Of course the Leash is also used in the heat of battle to grab enemies and pull them towards you, so you can kick them, Duke Nukem style (more on that later), by press Circle. Kicking and sliding (double tap X) are two of the best passive abilities you have, sliding into a foe sends them up into the air, and kicking them is great for launching them into an environmental hazard (long fall, spikes, electrical shock, big fast fan, etc).
Obviously, the Leash, kicking, and sliding are all things most FPS games do not do, and these actions form the core of the Skill Points system. It’s kind of silly how they explain it in the game, and I’ll leave that for you to discover, but the Leash actually keeps score of your kills and how you perform them. You can get very creative — all told there are 121 different, unique “skillshots” to unlock in the game, some of which are just one-off events that happen to certain enemies at certain times, others are like “Bullet Kick” where you kick and enemy and shoot them dead while they’re still airborne. Or Vertigo, where you kick an enemy into a long fall, or Gag Reflex, where you shoot the foe in the neck. These skillshots are all named and awarded points, with a tracker in the lower left corner to show you your current total.
Skill Points are used at regularly placed supply points, at which you can restock ammo (both regular and the more powerful Charge shot version), and change weapons (you can only carry the default assault rifle which has unlimited ammo and two other weapons). There are about eight guns in the game, from the assault rifle to a sniper rifle, shotgun, revolver, and like four types of explosive weapons. You’ll find a groove probably around three-quarters of the way through and typically stick with a common set, I know in my case I rarely used the Sniper Rilfe or the last weapon you get whose name escapes me right now (but it’s the one with the big spike rounds).
Playing Bulletstorm is fun and straight-forward. Firefights are always just around the corner, and thanks to the freedom of combat you have and the encouragement to get creative, you’re to come up with some fun combinations. Level design is pretty good, with some neat set pieces that give you chances to grab a massive gatling gun and times when you’re fighting — or once when you’re controlling — a massive T-Rex like creature. The variety is pretty cool, and some areas visually open up a lot and provide some impressive backgrounds, especially with the remastered graphics. However, and this is not really a gripe as much as it is just a statement, the level design is very straight-forward in that there is just one path to take, and you can often literally see the writing on the screen as to what that path is. In other words, the prompt for “Leash” or “Kick” or “Jump Over” or whatever pops up on your screen at a pretty good distance, and these are actions that, once taken, mean that a) you’re on the right path and b) you probably can’t turn back again (nor do you need to). Any straying from the path is short-lived, but might yield an extra ammo drop or a collectible (finding liquor bottles to drink or shoot or finding twenty-eight newsbots to destroy).
Bulletstorm has a good flow to it though, and it’s over before it wears out its own welcome. The foul language is a little cringe-worthy at time, smirk-worthy other times, and downright funny a time or two as well. The story and characters aren’t groundbreaking, and you can see the visual and personality similarities beyond Dead Echo and the crew from Gears of War plainly, too — typical over-sized, gruff bros with guns going against aliens. It is what it is, but to that point, Bulletstorm was a lot of fun to play through again this past week as it was several years ago when it first came out. I have yet to play multiplayer, however, which includes support for four player co-op campaign which sounds like a blast, as well as competitive play across thirty maps.
Getting down to brass tacks, the Full Clip Edition brings with it remastered visual by the way of hi-res textures, increased poly counts, smoother framerates, improved audio, and 4K support for PC and PS4 Pro. All add-ons and content previously released is included, although to be honest, I’m not sure specifically what that entails. Overkill Campaign mode unlocks after beating the campaign, and this gives you access to not only all the weapons from the start, but the ability to wield them all at the same time, too. If you unlock all of the Skillshots for a particular weapon, you are also granted infinite ammo. The game is easy enough, though, that this seems like it would be too easy in Overkill Mode to want to mess with. You also get six new maps in the Echo Mode.
Finally, I was granted a review code for the Duke Nukem’s Bulletstorm Tour which is a pretty neat idea. It’s a very small download and what it does is re-skin Grayson Hunt to look like Duke. Jon St. John, the original voice-actor for Duke from twenty-plus years ago, records some new lines too. Currently, there are some lip-syncing issues in the cutscenes, but there will be a day one patch to address these. This DLC is pretty cool, as it lets you play the campaign as Duke instead of Grayson — the hands on the guns appear different, Duke stands in for Grayson in the cutscenes, although the NPCs still call you Gray or Grayson. Duke has some unqiue dialog, but some of it is exactly the same as what Grayson would say, and the subtitles are sometimes way off between what Duke says and what’s on screen, but hey, it’s not really a big deal.
Bottomline, if you enjoyed Bulletstorm previously or missed out on it, the Full Clip Edition is a great way to experience it. This is quite possibly the most over-the-top FPS I have played, and it’s a hoot. Gearbox and People Can Fly have done a solid job with this remaster and I’m happy to recommend it to anyone that enjoys an action-heavy FPS experience.
###